CCC

Good to know. Just up the road from me. Thanks

When buying then 1) is pretty much word for word. When selling my own cars privately the traders who rang up and offered me 50% off the asking without even seeing wound me up. There was one that made me smile. I’d advertised an E39 535i at midnight at had a phone call at 7am from a guy in Stafford. He’d driven down immediately and bought it there and then at the advertised price (by the time he arrived I’d had several calls so knew it was going to sell fast). At 9.30am a trader rings and launches into his spiel about why it will never sell and how he would do me a favour, etc. He rabbited on for a whole minute whilst I tried to interrupt him to tell him the car had already sold, to the first viewer for the full asking. Being polite got us my sons Focus for £300. Spares or repair at £500 and everyone else had just taken the piss and slated it. We drove it, praised it and offered £300 politely, expecting a haggle and she accepted it there and then. A steal as it needed £100 of work and was worth £500 all day long to someone who could fix it.

Direct debit probably best as it’s a bit pricey on tax.

Piggy backing this with a stupid question. If I want to use a car I’ve currently got in stock in the same way (lovely MINI Checkmate that’s quite addictive to drive) can I just tax it online?

My gut feel is heavily worked on in photoshop?

Thanks Nick

Thanks all.

Just outside MK. Thanks, good to know we're not alone in our mistakes (or is that "learnings" nowadays) and insurance costs too.

Hi, Another newbie here, I've posted before but not done any introductions. As I've got a question to ask the forums advice on, I thought it polite to do a brief intro first. Since I was a kid, I've liked the idea of working with cars, but never had the funds/time to give it a go (and too risk averse to borrow loads of cash to start out). i've bought and sold quite a few cars in my time, and there was a period a few years ago when buying and selling the occasional modern classic kept my head above water but I've never done it as a business until the start of this year. Having sold my previous company which I build up over a decade, I finally had some time on my hands and some money to invest in stock, so when a friend who's worked in the trade most his life (for main dealers) approached me about working together it sounded like a good opportunity. From reading this forum a lot recently I think we've learnt many of the lessons that first timers do, and as we approach our second year trading we're a bit older but a lot wiser. A few of our mistakes have been: Buying stock when we felt we needed stock, rather than waiting for the right car to come along at the right price Underestimating the likelihood of older cars needing unforeseen repairs beyond the one's we've been aware off when buying Having too many cars in prep at one time and none available to buy Overpricing good stock initially rather than trying to get a quick turnaround on it Overpaying for cars at auction (primarily fees) Focussing on cars with too low a price point on the basis this should help stock turn I'm sure I could add another dozen or more to this, but the long and the short of it is we've probably overpaid for stock as we've not left enough fat in the margin for unforeseen items. Going forwards a bit of a less is more approach and trying to buy when the price is right rather than because a car fits our target stock profile. This forum has been great for education and also for realising that some of the problems we've seen aren't unique to us (e.g. high auction prices relative to retails). Also good to know we're not alone in getting a good car stick for few weeks, then get a shedload of inquiries the day after it sells. Our insurance renewal is due up soon and we're wondering if anyone has any recommendations? We used Bollington as a broker and I can't remember who the actual policy is with but we had expected a slight drop on renewal as we're no longer a new policy holder but this doesn't seem to have happened. Last year we struggled with options as cars were stored on our drives, or at a local farm (open yard), but we've now got covered storage at a different farm, though we still need cover at home too as moving cars in/out storage when viewing/doing prep can be a headache, and i like the idea of actually using them a bit to spot issues before we sell them on as it's often the small stuff (e.g. passenger door locks) that catch you out. Any advice is much appreciated.

Worth shopping around if you are doing over £1m per annum on cards. My experience was they didn’t want to know sub £500k, above that then you’d be offered more favourable rates, above £1m then you could negotiate and play them off against each other. That was the days of fixed debit card charges too. Does Audi have recommend that in their service schedule? BMW are supposedly sealed for life though specialists recommend a change around 80k. I’m the only person I know who’s ever had an auto box oil change done on their own car.

That’s great info, our customers have generally already got quotes from existing g insurers (we encourage them to check costs before paying and collecting to avoid last minute dropouts) but cuvva sounds a great solution if they don’t. Nick - do you need to sign up and pay for HPI driveaway?

Not as a dealer, but chargebacks were a nightmare for my previous business. Fortunately we only got a few a year but customers would forget they’d bought something from us online, when they got their card statement or bank statement, phone the bank and suggest it was fraud then the bank would take the money out of our account a fortnight later. The payment provider would write to us first but even sending them proof of sale was a waste of time and the money came out of our account no matter what. We gave up worrying and just asked the customer for the goods back or pay us again, which they did quite happily as they always realised what the payment was for when we called them.

Hi, Another newbie here. I'll do a full intro in the next few days (in reality a list of all the mistakes we've made) but this forum has been great for realising we're (my business partner and myself) aren't alone in making these errors in the first few months of trading. The best bit has been learning we're not alone in thinking that auction prices at the moment are way over where they should be. Though that's not stopped us buying over priced stock though. The words above (quoted) were also great to read as we'd reached that conclusion, we need to find stuff that will work well within a small dealer environment, we'd considered a pitch briefly but costs round here are eye watering, finding storage at reasonable prices has been hard enough. Anyway I'd like to thank all the posters for the wealth of knowledge that's to be found here and now I've moved from lurking to posting then I promise to try to contribute a bit too.